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Insects crawl on, and mushrooms sprout from, a dead tree on the forest floor
Living World

The teeming life of dead trees

By Katarina Zimmer

Rotting logs turn out to be vital to forest biodiversity and recycling organic matter

Image shows the dark maria of the near side of the Moon alongside the lighter colored far side.
Physical World

Moon rocks reveal hidden lunar history

By Nicola Jones

As NASA astronauts aim for landings in 2027, geologists find surprises in recently retrieved samples from the far side

Photograph of a couple sitting on a couch. They are reading quietly.
The Mind

Quiet couples: Alone time together

By Francine Russo

The right kind of silence can be golden, revitalizing and strengthening a relationship

A condor spreads its wings on the summit of a mountain.
Food & Environment

Return of the California condor

By Iván Carrillo

North America’s largest bird disappeared from the wild in the late 1980s. Reintroduction work in the United States and Mexico has brought this huge vulture back to the skies. This is the story of its comeback.

Photograph of a woman lying on her bed in her home while a nurse in white coat and mask checks her vital signs.
Health & Disease

Bringing the hospital into the home

By Lola Butcher

A movement to provide hospital-level care for sick patients in their own beds, in the comfort of familiar surroundings, is growing in the United States — a trend already embraced in some other countries

Illustration shows a robot standing in front of a judicial robe hanging on a hook.
Society

Why regulating AI is so hard — and necessary

Misinformation, market volatility and more: Faced with the need to mitigate risks that artificial intelligence presents, countries and regions are charting different paths

By Carl-Johan Karlsson
A cross-section of a tree’s roots beneath the soil.
Food & Environment

Why scientists are enlisting fungi to save endangered plants

The mycorrhizae that live among and in plant roots can boost the health of certain species, and even whole ecosystems — but scientists warn against a one-size-fits-all approach

By Shi En Kim
A bristly, vivid green caterpillar sits on a piece of wood.
Living World

The caterpillars that can kill you

By Bob Holmes

Some species make venoms that are deadly. With more research, those toxic compounds could yield useful medicines.

Nine human silhouettes are depicted as tiled mosaics with patches of darker and lighter colors.
Health & Disease

We are all genetic mosaics

By Amber Dance

Picture your body: It’s a collection of cells carrying thousands of DNA errors accrued over a lifetime — many harmless, some bad, and at least a few that may be good for you.

Stars sparkle within pink, filamentous swirls on a black background.
Physical World

When everything in the universe changed

By Elizabeth Quill

The revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope and next-gen radio telescopes are probing what’s known as the epoch of reionization. It holds clues to the first stars and galaxies, and perhaps the nature of dark matter.

Little movie of a solar panel, over which clouds are slowly rolling on a gloomy day.
Food & Environment

Solving renewable energy’s sticky storage problem

By Katarina Zimmer

When the Sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, humanity still needs power. Researchers are designing new technologies, from reinvented batteries to compressed air and spinning wheels, to keep energy in reserve for the lean times.

Illustrated collage highlights some of the science stories of the year.
Society

Top science stories of 2024

By Nicola Jones

This record-setting year for heat saw stunning auroras, a map of a brain, a Dengue epidemic, the first look at rocks from the far side of the Moon, an AI energy scramble and more

Multimedia

A conceptual collage shows a web of images such as false morels, the brain, neurons and a person in a wheelchair, against an image of mountains.
Health & Disease

A devastating nerve disease stalks a mountain village

By Terence Monmaney

Neurologists have grappled with a cluster of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis cases in France, where a fondness for a toxic wild mushroom may hold the answer

Five self-portraits by Albrecht Dürer arranged in chronological order.
The Mind

Making friends with your past and future selves

By Katherine Ellison

It’s what psychologists call self-continuity, and can improve your health and well-being

Painting showing several women in yellow robes reclining on a long bed. Some are fast asleep. One is awake.
The Mind

The ones who need little sleep

By Marla Broadfoot

Short sleepers cruise by on four to six hours a night and don’t seem to suffer ill effects. Turns out they’re genetically built to require less sleep than the rest of us.

Drawing of a home in cross section highlighting parts and places to make more energy efficient.
Society

The great green building makeover

By Kaja Šeruga

Getting our homes and workplaces to be energy efficient has major benefits — but not when it is done one window at a time. Here’s why deep retrofits and biomaterials are key to more sustainable living.

Photograph of corn stalks growing in a field. The earth is dry and cracked.
Food & Environment

Can desalination quench agriculture’s thirst?

By Lela Nargi

Miles away from the ocean, projects are afoot to clean up salty groundwater and use it to grow crops. Some say it’s a costly pipe dream, others say it’s part of the future.

Colorful visualizations of Calabi Yau surfaces suggest many possible geometries, represented as a variety of intricately twisted and folded shapes.
Physical World

String theory is not dead

Out of the limelight, theoretical physicists seek the math that can explain the universe’s particles and forces

By Tom Siegfried
Illustration shows plants with eggs where flowers should be. In center are two chickens with red slash through them. Background shows faint outline of proteins.
Technology

Cracking the recipe for perfect plant-based eggs

Hint: It involves finding just the right proteins. With new ingredients and processes, the next generation of substitutes will be not just more egg-like, but potentially more nutritious.

By Bob Holmes
A brightly colored butterfly sits on a flower, feeding.
Living World

The secrets of butterfly migration, written in pollen

By Saugat Bolakhe

Trillions of insects move around the globe each year. Scientists are working on new ways to map those long-distance journeys.

Photograph of a female earwig carefully grooming a cluster of pale eggs.
Living World

She ain’t scary, she’s my mother

By Tim Vernimmen

Elaborate courtship, devoted parenthood, gregarious nature (and occasional cannibalism) — earwigs have a lot going for them

A black and yellow frog clambers over sphagnum moss.
Living World

Frogs kick back against lethal fungus

By Martin J. Kernan

Scientists are seeing signs of resistance to the infections that have been wiping out the world’s amphibian populations — and developing strategies to aid in the fight Down Under

People doing different things in a crowd: walking, standing and talking, rushing, carrying things, pushing strollers, walking dogs.
Society

Bustling through the physics of crowds

By Matthew R. Francis   Illustrated by Maki Naro

COMIC: Using tools from fields like fluid dynamics to better understand how groups of people move around can improve flow and make large gatherings safer

Photograph of a small child sitting in a waiting-room chair with fists covering their face.
Health & Disease

Severe irritability in children and teens: A new understanding

By Katarina Zimmer

Kids with disruptive mood dysregulation disorder have explosive outbursts well past toddler age. Scientists are trying to work out the causes and what treatments help.

Photograph of a dead house fly infected with Entomophthora muscae with elevated wings and a black and white striped appearance to its abdomen. It has dark, ruby-red eyes and is placed on a flat surface and photographed on a dark background.
Living World

Night of the zombie insects

A parasitic fungus takes over the brains of flies and controls them for its own sinister ends. Here’s the science behind the horror.

By Rohini Subrahmanyam
Conceptual illustration of a ribosome with mRNA running through as it strings together amino acids to create a new protein.
Living World

When ribosomes go rogue

Unusual variations in the cellular protein factory can skew development, help cancer spread and more. But ribosome variety may also play biological roles, scientists say.

By Tim Vernimmen

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